HSU: Ch. 293

According to Muzo's plan, before officially advancing on Iwa, he first intended to create a vacuum zone between Iwa and the border. This vacuum zone would extend all the way to the northern port fortress.

By doing this, the logistics supply line for the Iwa army would have to make a wide detour, going around this vacuum zone and approaching from the Land of Earth's side. And that area would be the target of Suna ninja army's attacks. Only then could it be considered true coordination with their allied forces.

Regardless of whether they wanted to hit Suna along the way, if Iwa's logistics couldn't keep up, their numbers wouldn't matter.

Without reinforcements, Iwa's frontline forces couldn't hold out. Not to mention equipment issues, it would be either surrender or starvation. It was not that Muzo looked down on them, but he believed today's ninjas weren't as good at enduring hunger.

The Konoha ninja army could end the war against Iwa in the shortest time possible. And the best result would be if he could take Iwa before their leader arrived.

Without Ōnoki's Dust Release, this plan had a high chance of success. Just Deidara alone couldn't stop him.

When Muzo reached the seventh population center, he finally encountered an organized Iwa military unit. By then, however, he had amassed over a hundred Edo Tensei soldiers, thanks to encountering an Iwa military ammunition depot along the way, where he had replenished a significant number of them.

He was no longer limiting his reanimations to enemy chunin, even genin were now considered. He grouped the genin together to serve as dedicated explosive troops.

The controllable Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags, which he had developed and refined in life, finally began to demonstrate its true value.

Thanks to Hashirama, Tobirama had invented many techniques, but aside from Water Release and Flying Thunder God, most had been banned from use by Hashirama.

The Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags, however, was useless without Edo Tensei to activate it properly.

All the tags stockpiled by Iwa became his spoils of war, reducing the burden on Konoha's own reserves.

The organized Iwa unit he encountered was a search party dispatched by the village. The refugee group had grown too large and conspicuous, making it hard for the Konoha ninjas to manage them effectively. Many refugees had broken away and scattered to surrounding areas.

It was only natural that Iwa tracked the Konoha ninjas down through the refugees.

But then…

"Scatter and kill them." Muzo gave this brief command, and the ANBU immediately left the refugee convoy and, alongside the hundred-plus reanimated soldiers, charged at the approaching Iwa forces. The mindset of these ANBU was now completely different from when they first set out.

You could say that he had opened a new door for them.

There were different ways to be ANBU.

The hundred Edo Tensei soldiers rushed in first, exhausting the enemy's chakra while engaging in high-intensity, non-stop ninjutsu exchanges, one of the key features of the Edo Tensei.

Ninjas from the same village now fought on opposite sides, launching the same composite Earth Release techniques to seize the initiative. From a distance, it looked like two earth dragons crashing into each other.

Another advantage of Edo Tensei was that each jutsu could be performed at full power every time, unlike the living, who would be drained completely.

So these hundred-plus reanimated ninjas unleashed attacks equivalent to what two hundred living ones could manage.

The ANBU, meanwhile, flanked around from the sides.

Only one person didn't.

This was Muzo's experience: As long as I run fast enough, punch hard enough, hit strong enough, and heal well enough, no one can force me to take a detour.

Now that he was an Edo Tensei individual himself, he could even skip the last part.

Thanks to the Edo Tensei soldiers' composite Earth Release, the path for Muzo to charge into the Iwa forces was smooth and flat, almost effortless.

As usual, he was the first to engage the enemy. He immediately tore a hole through the Iwa formation. After all these years, the Iwa ninjas' weaknesses were still the same.

Because multi-person composite ninjutsu required extremely stable chakra coordination, performing large-scale Earth Release techniques at a corps level demanded strict output and precise formations. Each formation affected the ninjutsu boost differently, which made the Iwa ninja corps the worst at adapting to sudden flanking or disruptive maneuvers in the entire shinobi world.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to fully capitalize on their Earth Release group tactics. But this flaw made them perfect prey for Muzo to rampage through and bathe in blood.

After cutting through three lines of enemy ninjas, a second wave of composite Earth Release from the Edo Tensei soldiers came from behind him.

Friendly fire? Didn't exist for Edo Tensei.

"Accidental sealing" was the only kind of mishap they might face.

With their chakra output and coordination disrupted, the Iwa ninjas couldn't stop this new wave of attack. The Edo Tensei soldiers' jutsu steamrolled through the disorganized formation. Stone, earth, and Iwa blood tangled together, the frontline ninja were either crushed into pulp or flung into the air.

The Edo Tensei soldiers howled as they charged deep into the Iwa ranks, completely shattering their formation.

Only now did the ANBU complete their flanking maneuver. But this time, they arrived just in time, no longer just spectators. They had their pride, too. They weren't content with merely watching. Muzo had shown them the ruthless extremes of the Warring States-period ninjas, and now they wanted to show him the spirit of the modern ninja.

They wanted him to know that the modern ANBU could fight and was not afraid to fight.

From a distance, they launched volleys of kunai and shuriken. Among them were Sarutobi clan members skilled in the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique, a dark wave of throwing weapons rose and fell like snow on the wind, buzzing like a swarm of bees, soon drowned out by the thunder of exploding tags.

The ANBU then stormed in from the other side, accelerating the collapse of the Iwa formation.

Dust and smoke swirled among the dead, new Edo Tensei soldiers were rising.

In the distance, refugees looked on in silence, not daring to run, stunned as they watched Iwa ninjas fall to a much smaller Konoha force in such a short time. The Iwa ninjas who failed to escape were all slain on the spot.

After finishing off this wave of Iwa ninjas, Muzo led the Konoha ninjas in cleaning up the battlefield, regrouped his now-expanded Edo Tensei army, and set off toward the next city.

The refugee tide was already in motion. Iwa had begun deploying full-scale units. The first phase of the operation was complete.

Now, they could begin mobile warfare. The vacuum zone needed to be carved out quickly. If there were too many Iwa ninjas, they'd retreat. If there were few, they'd slaughter.

They would burn more villages, further wreck the Land of Earth's production capability, and accelerate the depletion of its already limited grain reserves.

It was time for the tide to rise.

As members of Konoha's ANBU, maintaining a strong mental state was a fundamental requirement.

However, the ANBU agents currently following Muzo were genuinely beginning to feel like… maybe this wasn't the real ANBU after all.

Honoring the dead was something practiced by every organization.

In Konoha, this tradition within the ANBU began during the time of the Third Hokage. By then, the ANBU had already lost the effortless confidence it had under the previous Hokage. Though the unit had grown in size, its missions had become increasingly difficult and complex.

Enemies, too, had formed their own black ops divisions, rapidly closing the gap between themselves and Konoha.

By definition, the ANBU was not a place for conducting open or honorable affairs. Its members' identities are top-secret, their missions done in shadows, and if they died outside the village, their names weren't even engraved on the memorial stone.

Only those with true dedication to the village would choose to join the ANBU.

The salary argument didn't hold. Sure, ANBU members earned more than standard public servants, but those were public service standards. To even qualify for ANBU, you must at least be a chunin.

At that level, a ninja would have a much easier and more profitable life in the regular forces.

It was the classic thankless, high-risk job.

Former Root members often looked down on the regular ANBU, largely because, for a long time, Root did all the dirtiest, hardest, most dangerous tasks. Still, everyone had underestimated the Warring States period.

Some things were well-known in theory, but incredibly hard to actually implement.

Ninjas of this era had far higher moral standards than their predecessors.

In theory, ANBU should be the grittiest, darkest branch of the shinobi world. Yet, in the original timeline, even Konoha's ANBU instinctively called Orochimaru a "monster" when they saw his Living Corpse Reincarnation. And when they witnessed the Edo Tensei, they were deeply disturbed.

Not by what the jutsu did, but by what it was.

That was why they would say things like, "Even if they look the same, those are not the First and Second Hokage," part of that was concern that Hiruzen would be unable to fight his former teachers, but also an unconscious rejection of the technique itself.

But Muzo didn't reject it, he used it in ways even more extreme than the legends described. And yet, compared to his overall war strategies, that was barely scratching the surface.

Modern ninjas tried not to involve civilians directly in war.

If social order collapses, a huge chunk of the market economy vanishes, just look at what happened to the Land of Rain.

Clearly, the Warring States period had no such concerns. Modern ninja wars were about concentrating wealth and optimizing resource flow. But for Muzo and other Warring States ninjas, war was about destruction.

As more and more reanimated soldiers filled their ranks, Konoha's ANBU began to feel the pressure.

At first, they were surrounded by fellow ANBU with just a handful of Edo Tensei soldiers. But by the time they encountered an Iwa scouting squad, their numbers were roughly equal. When the ANBU followed Muzo from the southern to the northern border of the Land of Earth, they were completely surrounded by reanimated ninjas.

This was now a real army of reanimations.

Over two thousand Edo Tensei soldiers, ranging from genin, chunin, and special jonin, up to jonin, made up this corps, effectively replicating the full rank structure of Iwa's forces.

Why "effectively"? Because at least there were no former "Kage"-level individuals among them.

This undead army was far stronger than the Iwa force that had raided Konoha during the Third Great Ninja War.

Not only were their numbers greater, but their coordination was flawless, they acted under a single will. They needed no food, no water, no rest. Among them were nearly 30 reanimated ninjas who had been jonin in life, and hundreds of chunin.

And even those who had been genin were no longer weak: with infinite chakra and undying bodies, they could not be treated as mere low-level threats.

At the 18th town they reached, Muzo lured a pursuing Iwa squad into a valley using several hundred Edo Tensei genin. Then, he triggered a massive detonation using linked explosive tags, flattening the entire valley.

Afterward, he gained over a hundred new "recruits."

Once the total number exceeds 3,000, this force will be the size of a true vanguard army in a ninja war. At this point, only one final step remained in the "construction" of the vacuum zone.

The largest port in the northern Land of Earth.

When Iwa and Kumo clashed near the Land of Iron, the Iwa forces and their massive logistics convoy had departed from this very port.

It was also the Land of Earth's largest fishing hub.

Moreover, as one of the few major villages in the Land of Earth, it could not exist in isolation. Surrounding it were vast farmlands, villages, and even satellite towns. Of course, the satellite towns were already gone. Most of the refugees from those places had flooded into this port village.

The crops in the fields, those not yet ready for harvest or impossible to harvest in time, were burned. Muzo's reanimated troops even used earth jutsu to till the land for the farmers again.

The furrows they carved were wider than irrigation canals.

As for the villages, Muzo had spared them. This port village housed a significant garrison of Iwa ninjas.

Even before the Chunin Exams began, Iwa had been steadily deploying forces eastward. The idea was to avoid attracting Konoha's attention to their real troop movements, but naturally, that proved useless. Thanks to a prior agreement between Konoha and Iwa, the two villages jointly monitored the exchange, and the data fed back to Konoha allowed them to roughly estimate troop activity.

Even though Iwa had secretly shifted some mission traffic elsewhere, major transactions still went through the monitored systems.

Iwa's strategy of spreading out forces and supplies, then regrouping later, made their logistical lines especially vulnerable, and Muzo exploited this perfectly.

So many troops and so much military stockpiled equipment couldn't possibly be mobilized in time. He moved far too quickly for the Iwa forces to keep up.

If he could take this village, nearly half of Iwa's early-stage war supplies would be rendered useless. But even for him, taking such a large village required careful planning.

First, he set up a siege to lure reinforcements. This was the best battlefield to wear down any Iwa reinforcements that could be mustered quickly. And everything went as expected.

Within just one day of camping outside the village, he encountered over a dozen Iwa reinforcement squads. Some had hundreds of troops, others only a few dozen. A few even turned and fled at the mere sight of his forces. But before the army of over 2,000 reanimated ninjas, none of them could escape.

The quality of Iwa's mid-level ninjas was clearly revealed.

The reactive disorganization of their chunin made a glaring weakness obvious, these squads were converging on the battlefield on impulse, with no coordinated plan.

If Muzo had still been a living man, he might've needed to worry about the risks. But he was Edo Tensei. He had no such concerns. After completely wiping out the remaining Iwa troops around the port, the next morning, the nearly 3,000-strong reanimated army assembled in formation outside the village under Muzo's command.

Under the awed and fearful gazes of ANBU members like Aburame Torigen and Yamanaka Kaze, Muzo activated the reanimated battle formation using ninjutsu.

Thunderous explosions rocked the earth. Mountains roared in rage. Massive stones crashed onto the village walls, sending up dust clouds like storm fronts. Huge, jagged crevices tore across the ground, racing toward the village.

The walls crumbled. The battlements collapsed.

And then, it was over in moments. As the shaking stopped, the earth split and the sky choked with dust, the proud, towering defenses of the great village were simply gone.

The reanimated ninjas, their jutsu complete, marched with heavy steps across the rubble, killing any survivors they found, and began advancing into the village.